Today, I'm going to talk about my work on Emo, improvements I've made based on feedback from the Open Playtest, and my plans for the Ball Busters Steam Next Fest demo.
One of the main complaints from the Open Playtest was that the camera... was really bad.
So, for the past couple of weeks, I've been focusing on improving it, especially for narrow stages like Makura Plaza.
I've added things like making objects transparent when the camera gets inside them and zooming out when the ball or player gets too far away.
From what my playtesters have told me, aside from some occasional clipping, the camera system is 100x better.
Now for what I've really been focusing on for the past couple of weeks: Emo.
Emo is Hana's little brother and next in line to inherit the clan... too bad he's not happy about it.
Like Hana, he specializes in energy attacks.
Unlike Hana, he has a gimmick that no other character in Ball Busters has. Not even the upcoming characters I have planned...
Once you reach a certain Heat level, Emo will be able to perform Crashout Trigger, which is his transformation.
However, this works a bit differently from transformations in other games.
This was inspired by Sora's Anti Form in Kingdom Hearts 2.
What I'm planning for his Dark Transformation is that he won't have access to ANY of his special moves.
But he will have A LOT of physical attacks.
Like... a lot.
I still have to animate the rest of them and change his VFX, but I'm pretty excited about how they're turning out.
Emo's regular transformation functions more like a standard transformation in other games.
It increases the points you get from attacks and gives you access to more combos.
The point bonus won't be as high as his Dark Transformation, but it'll still be higher than his base form.
During the past couple of weeks, one of the modelers on the project decided to give Dressa and Maki's models a much-needed revamp.
And they look...
AMAZING.
He really knocked it out of the park with the redesigns.
Based on the current feedback from my playtesters, I feel like the game will be in a polished enough state to participate.
Anyway, that's about it for today!
Apologies for the short devlog, but I wanted to get something out since it's been a few weeks since the last post.
I'll try to post more updates in the coming weeks leading up to Steam Next Fest.
As always...
Thanks for reading! Hope you have an awesome day or night. See ya!